Mu'tazilite School of Islamic Thought

The Mu'tazilite school (al-Mu'tazilah) is a school of Islamic theology (kalam) that gives priority to reason, and to human will, in interpreting matters of belief. It emerged in Basra in the early eighth century CE, when Wasil ibn Ata and Amr ibn Ubayd put forward a view of the Muslim who commits a grave sin that differed from those of the Kharijites and the Murji'a, and in the Abbasid period it divided into two schools, one in Basra and one in Baghdad. Under the caliphs al-Ma'mun, al-Mu'tasim and al-Wathiq its doctrine was the official view of the state, and the Mihna, the inquisition over the createdness of the Quran, was carried out in their reigns. It was the first school to set out the articles of Islamic belief systematically, under its five principles, and kalam took shape as an independent discipline in the hands of its scholars. Its influence declined after the caliph al-Mutawakkil ended the Mihna and as the Sunni schools of kalam founded by al-Ash'ari and al-Maturidi took shape, but it did not disappear: it continued among the Zaydi Shia of Yemen and, in part, among the Imami Shia.

Historical Context: The World That Produced the Mu'tazilites

The Mu'tazilites first appeared under the Umayyads, but the school developed under the early Abbasid Caliphate. In Baghdad, Greek philosophical and scientific works were translated into Arabic, a movement that the caliph al-Mansur (r. 754–775) expanded; most sources date the founding of the House of Wisdom there to al-Ma'mun in 830.

The questions on which the Mu'tazilites first took their stand — the standing of a Muslim who commits a grave sin, the attributes of God, and whether human beings are the authors of their own voluntary acts — had arisen earlier, in debates among Muslims themselves. In the Abbasid period their theologians took up the questions raised by Greek philosophy as well, embracing reason as a theological method and answering, reworking or rejecting what they found rather than adopting it as it stood.

Origins: Wasil ibn Ata and the Founding Separation

An account found mostly in Sunni sources explains the school's name by a disagreement in the circle of the Basran scholar al-Hasan al-Basri (d. 728 CE), whose student Wasil ibn Ata (d. 748 CE) took a different view from his teacher's of the Muslim who commits a grave sin.

The question had already divided the Muslim community. The Kharijites held that such a person was no longer a believer and had left the community of Islam. The Murji'a held that he remained a believer, though a sinner (fasiq), and left his fate in the hereafter to God, who would forgive or punish him as He willed. The sources differ on al-Hasan al-Basri's own view: al-Nawawi, Abd al-Qahir al-Baghdadi and Ibn Hazm report that he held the grave sinner to be a hypocrite (munafiq), while al-Sabuni reports that he counted him a believer. Wasil ibn Ata held that the grave sinner occupied an intermediate position (al-manzila bayn al-manzilatayn), neither a believer nor an unbeliever. He left al-Hasan's circle and formed his own in another corner of the same mosque, and in this account al-Hasan said that Wasil had withdrawn (i'tazala) from them; hence the name Mu'tazila, "those who withdraw." Other explanations of the name are also recorded: the Mu'tazilite Abu al-Qasim al-Balkhi wrote that the school took its name from its classing the grave sinner as neither an unbeliever nor a believer but a fasiq.

After Wasil's death his brother-in-law Amr ibn Ubayd (d. 761 CE) led the movement. Wasil is credited with developing the principles of divine unity, the intermediate position, and commanding right and forbidding wrong, and Amr those of divine justice and of the promise and the threat; the system of five principles was completed with the book al-Usul al-Khamsa (The Five Principles) by Abu al-Hudhayl al-Allaf.

The Five Principles: The Theological Core

The Mu'tazilites set out their theology under five principles (al-usul al-khamsa). According to al-Khayyat, accepting all five was the condition of being counted a Mu'tazilite, and Abd al-Jabbar named, for each principle, the groups that rejected it.

The first principle was tawhid, divine unity. So as not to admit a multiplicity of eternal beings, the Mu'tazilites would not accept eternal attributes, such as knowledge or power, distinct from God's essence, and Wasil ibn Ata equated ascribing such attributes to God with associating partners with Him (shirk). Abu al-Hudhayl, al-Nazzam and Abu Ali al-Jubba'i held that the divine attributes are identical with God's essence, and their opponents called the Mu'tazilites Mu'attila, those who strip God of His attributes. The same concern led them to interpret the Quranic references to God's hand, face and sitting on the throne so as to keep Him free of all created things, and to hold that the Quran was created and that God cannot be seen.

The second principle was adl, divine justice. Abd al-Jabbar defined it as all of God's acts being good, so that He never does what is unjust or bad. It followed, for the Mu'tazilites, that the bad acts human beings commit cannot be created by God: God gives a person the power to act beforehand, and the person acts by free choice. Divine justice thus required human free will.

The third principle was al-wa'd wa-l-wa'id, the promise and the threat. God must reward those who do good and punish those who do wrong: whoever dies having repented of grave sins deserves reward, while whoever dies without repenting of them remains in hell for ever, though with a lighter punishment than that of unbelievers. Together with the principle of justice, it ruled out intercession in the hereafter.

The fourth principle was al-manzila bayn al-manzilatayn, the intermediate position, the first of the five to emerge. The grave sinner has not committed a denial that entails unbelief, so he is not an unbeliever, but because of his sin he cannot remain a believer either; the Mu'tazilites called him a fasiq. Wasil applied the principle to politics as well: one of the two parties, the supporters of Ali or those of Mu'awiya, had been in the wrong, but it could not be determined which, and judgment on them was to be left to God.

The fifth principle was al-amr bi-l-ma'ruf wa-l-nahy an al-munkar, commanding right and forbidding wrong, which the Mu'tazilites held to be an obligation on every Muslim, for spreading the call to Islam, guiding the misguided and preventing harm. According to Abd al-Jabbar they applied it to reform society and spread justice rather than as a means of turning people against those in power; later, however, some invoked it in support of revolts, as when Mu'tazilites backed the rising of al-Nafs al-Zakiyya, and, once in power, during the Mihna.

The Basra and Baghdad Schools

In the Abbasid period the Mu'tazila divided into a Basran and a Baghdadi branch, which in time became two schools. Both accepted the five principles but differed in detail: Abu Rashid al-Nisaburi counted 155 questions on which Abu al-Qasim al-Balkhi of Baghdad and Abu Hashim al-Jubba'i of Basra disagreed. The Basra school, whose first representative was Wasil ibn Ata, favoured intellectual debate and weighed reason and revelation together, treating philosophy as a tool in the service of religion. The Baghdad school, founded shortly after it by Bishr ibn al-Mu'tamir (d. 825 CE), was more prominent in practical and political matters: its members wanted the school's views spread through the state under the principle of commanding right, gave more weight to the imamate in their works, sought good relations with rulers, and, because of the translations begun under al-Ma'mun in Baghdad, were more influenced by philosophy than the Basrans.

The Basran school was later led by Abu Ali al-Jubba'i (d. 916 CE), a student of Abu Ya'qub al-Shahham who became its head on his teacher's death, and by his son Abu Hashim al-Jubba'i (d. 933 CE), whose theory of states (ahwal) holds that God's attributes exist by virtue of a state that He possesses.

The Mihna: Theology as State Policy

Under al-Ma'mun the Mu'tazilites Bishr ibn al-Mu'tamir, Thumama ibn Ashras and Ibn Abi Du'ad made their school the official doctrine of the court, and the caliph, at Ibn Abi Du'ad's urging in particular, adopted the view that the Quran was created. In the spring of 833 Caliph al-Ma'mun began the Mihna, the inquisition, writing to the governor of Baghdad, Ishaq ibn Ibrahim, to have the judges and the leading hadith scholars examined on the question.

The Mihna was carried out in Baghdad and extended to Egypt, Basra, Kufa, Damascus and Medina. Scholars were summoned and asked to affirm that the Quran was created; most did, and those who refused faced imprisonment and physical punishment. The Mihna continued, less harshly, under al-Ma'mun's successors al-Mu'tasim (833–842 CE) and al-Wathiq (842–847 CE).

The sources treat the Mihna above all through the case of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, the founder of the Hanbali school of law. He refused to affirm the created Quran and would accept no argument except from the Quran and the hadith. He was sent in chains towards al-Ma'mun at Tarsus, imprisoned in Baghdad after the caliph's death, and under al-Mu'tasim flogged and held for two years and four months before his release. Al-Jahiz, al-Ya'qubi and Ibn Khallikan wrote that he gave way under torture, but later research has found that he held to his position. The Mihna eased after al-Wathiq's death and, after continuing for some years under the caliph al-Mutawakkil, ended in 849 with a ban on debating whether the Quran was created; its last traces were removed in 851–852, when the chief judge Ibn Abi Du'ad was dismissed and its victims were released.

The Mihna did not end Mu'tazilite theology, and the school continued to produce scholars for another two centuries.

The Created Quran: The Central Controversy

The doctrine of the created Quran (khalq al-Quran) was the question at issue in the Mihna. The Mu'tazilites held that the Quran is God's speech in the true sense, made of letters and sounds that God creates outside His essence, in the Preserved Tablet, in Gabriel and in the Prophet; it is therefore created and came into being in time, and there is no inner, eternal speech in God apart from these letters and sounds. They argued that the Quran came about through a divine act and so must be created; that its varied content, of commands and prohibitions, promises and threats, and reports, could not belong to an essential attribute of God; that if it were eternal, the people it addresses would have to be eternal too, since addressing beings not yet created would not be wise; and that it is a recited Arabic book whose verses were revealed at different times.

The scriptural argument turned in part on a single verb. The Quran describes itself in Surah al-Zukhruf as having been made an Arabic Quran (Quran 43:3), and the Mu'tazilites took the verb ja'ala, to make, as evidence that it had been made, and so created. Their opponents answered that the verb is not always used in the Quran in the sense of creating, and pointed to the verse that names creation and command as two things, "His is the creation and the command" (Quran 7:54): all that is created belongs to creation, while the command is God's speech.

The opponents of the Mu'tazila agreed that God's speech is not created but differed over its words. Some hadith scholars held that the Quran is uncreated in its words as well as its meanings. Ibn Kullab, al-Muhasibi and al-Karabisi, and after them al-Ash'ari, held that the speech subsisting in God's essence is eternal, while the words that express it, as people recite them, are created.

Key Figures of the Classical Period

Wasil ibn Ata (d. 748 CE)

Wasil ibn Ata is known as the founder of the Mu'tazilite school. Born in Medina in 699, he lived in Basra, where he married the sister of Amr ibn Ubayd. The heresiographers describe his teaching as resting on four principles: that eternal attributes such as life, knowledge, power and will cannot be ascribed to God apart from His essence; that the evil and unjust acts of human beings cannot be attributed to God's creation, since that would deny His justice; the intermediate position, on which he wrote a book; and that one of the parties at the battles of the Camel and Siffin had been in the wrong, though it could not be known which. Few of his writings survive.

Al-Nazzam (d. 845 CE)

Ibrahim al-Nazzam, a student of Abu al-Hudhayl and one of the leading theologians of the Basran school, founded the branch named after him, the Nazzamiyya. He studied the Indian and Iranian religions, Judaism and Christianity, examined Greek philosophy and wrote refutations of some of Aristotle's works. He rejected the indivisible atom, holding that every part can be divided without end, and put forward the theories of the leap (tafra) and of latency (kumun) in natural philosophy. On the Quran's inimitability (i'jaz) he held that a text like it could be produced but that God prevents anyone from doing so, the doctrine known as sarfa (turning away), and that the Quran is miraculous only in its reports of the unseen. On this, on his view that God has no power to do evil and on several other questions he differed from the other Mu'tazilites. He influenced many of them, al-Jahiz among them, while his teacher Abu al-Hudhayl, Abu Ali al-Jubba'i and, among the Sunnis, al-Ash'ari and al-Baqillani wrote works refuting him.

Al-Jahiz (d. 869 CE)

Abu Uthman al-Jahiz, a prose writer and theologian of Basra, was trained in al-Nazzam's circle and was regarded after his teacher as head of the Basran Mu'tazila. Al-Sandubi, who wrote his biography from the early sources, records that his grandfather was a black camel-herder. As a theologian he wrote on knowledge, natural philosophy, the divine attributes, human acts, prophecy and the imamate, and his works include the Kitab al-Hayawan (Book of Animals).

Abd al-Jabbar al-Hamadhani (d. 1025 CE)

Abd al-Jabbar was a theologian of the Basran Mu'tazila and a Shafi'i jurist. The Buyid vizier al-Sahib ibn Abbad, a patron of Mu'tazilite scholars, invited him to Rayy and had him appointed chief judge (qadi al-qudat); after al-Sahib's death in 995 the ruler Fakhr al-Dawla removed him from office, and he spent the rest of his life teaching and writing, dying in Rayy in January 1025. Following an eclectic method, he brought together the views of earlier Mu'tazilite scholars and chose among them, generally preferring those of Abu Hashim al-Jubba'i. His al-Mughni fi Abwab al-Tawhid wa-l-Adl (The Sufficient Work on the Chapters of Divine Unity and Justice) is thought to have filled twenty volumes; the volumes recovered were published in sixteen volumes in Cairo between 1960 and 1965.

The Ash'arite Response and the Transformation of Kalam

One response came from within the school itself. Al-Ash'ari (d. 935 CE), born in Basra around 873–874, was raised under the protection of Abu Ali al-Jubba'i, who had married his mother, and studied kalam with him; in his youth he held Mu'tazilite views and wrote works defending them. Around 912–913, on a Friday in the mosque of Basra, he announced that he had left the Mu'tazila for the Ahl al-Sunna and adopted the creed of the early generations as Ahmad ibn Hanbal and the other hadith scholars represented it. Among the reasons for his break is counted his rejection of the Mu'tazilite view that places obligations on God, on which he did not receive satisfying answers from al-Jubba'i.

Al-Ash'ari at first followed Ahmad ibn Hanbal, but before long he came to support the articles of belief with rational arguments while giving priority to the texts. He held that God has eternal attributes, so that He is knowing by knowledge and powerful by power; that the speech subsisting in God's essence is eternal while the words that express it are originated; and, on human acts, he taught the doctrine of acquisition (kasb).

Al-Ash'ari and al-Maturidi founded the Sunni schools of kalam. Having spent much of his life among the Mu'tazilites, al-Ash'ari remained under their influence in the method of kalam and on several questions, among them the divine attributes, acquisition, the indivisible atom, figurative interpretation (ta'wil) and the origination of the world, and the Mu'tazilite influence on Sunni theology began with him.

Mu'tazilite Influence on Islamic Philosophy

The Mu'tazilites were theologians working within kalam, not philosophers. Al-Kindi lived in the period when kalam was taking shape as an independent discipline in their hands, and Mahmut Kaya, writing in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, holds that while he was in Basra he drew heavily on the Basran Mu'tazilites and received his first training in dialectic among them. The caliphs al-Ma'mun, al-Mu'tasim and al-Wathiq treated the Mu'tazilite school as the official view of the state; when al-Mutawakkil turned to a pro-Sunni policy, al-Kindi fell from favour and spent the last twenty years of his life away from the court.

Decline, Survival, and the Zaydi Tradition

After al-Mutawakkil ended the Mihna in 849 the Mu'tazilites lost the caliphs' backing. The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi's entry on the school counts among the causes of their decline their support for coercion during the Mihna, disputes among themselves over questions outside the fundamentals of religion, the defection of Ibn al-Rawandi, and the founding of the Sunni schools of kalam by al-Ash'ari and al-Maturidi. They found patrons again under the Buyids, whose vizier al-Sahib ibn Abbad appointed Abd al-Jabbar chief judge, and under the Seljuk vizier al-Kunduri. After al-Kunduri was removed from office in 1064 they lost their political support; the vizier Nizam al-Mulk favoured the Ash'arites, and after the criticisms of al-Juwayni and al-Ghazali the Mu'tazilites, unable to hold their ground in Baghdad, moved to Khurasan and Khwarazm.

The school did not disappear. The closeness between the Mu'tazila and the Shia, begun with Zayd ibn Ali in Wasil's time and with al-Qasim ibn Ibrahim al-Rassi in al-Ma'mun's, continued in the Zaydism of Yemen and in part among the Imamis; the Zaydi scholar al-Maqbali records that the Zaydis and the Mu'tazila hold the same views on the fundamentals of religion and differ only on the imamate. The Mu'tazila survives today partly in Shia circles and above all among the Zaydis of Yemen. Most of the works its scholars wrote have not survived.

Modern Reassessment

In the modern period the Mu'tazila drew renewed attention. Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905 CE) was accused as a student at al-Azhar of preferring the Mu'tazila to the Ash'ari school in his lessons, and some Western scholars, among them R. Caspar and Detlev Khalid, classed him as a representative of a "Neo-Mu'tazilite" current because of the weight he gave to reason. The TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi's entry on Abduh rejects that classification, pointing to his criticisms of the Mu'tazila and to his thought as a whole.

References and Further Reading

Primary Islamic Sources

• Quran, Surah Al-Zukhruf (43:3) — the Quran described as having been made an Arabic Quran; the Mu'tazilites took the verb ja'ala as evidence that it was created, and their opponents answered that the verb does not always mean to create. Consulted at https://quran.com/43/3
• Quran, Surah Al-A'raf (7:54) — "His is the creation and the command," cited by the Mu'tazilites' opponents for the distinction between what God creates and His command, His speech. Consulted at https://quran.com/7/54

Classical Islamic Sources

The record of the school is a heresiographical and theological literature, much of it lost. The works below are the texts on which that record rests and which this article discusses. They are named as the record, identified through the bibliographies of the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi entries listed under Academic and Scholarly Sources, rather than as texts consulted directly in the original for this article.

• Abu al-Husayn al-Khayyat, Kitab al-Intisar — the earliest surviving defence of the school by a Mu'tazilite, written against Ibn al-Rawandi's Fadihat al-Mu'tazila, and the authority for the condition that a Mu'tazilite accepts all five principles
• Al-Qadi Abd al-Jabbar, al-Mughni fi Abwab al-Tawhid wa al-Adl, Sharh al-Usul al-Khamsa, and Fadl al-I'tizal wa Tabaqat al-Mu'tazila — the fullest statement of the school's theology to survive, and its own account of its generations
• Abu Rashid al-Nisaburi, al-Masa'il fi al-Khilaf bayna al-Basriyyin wa al-Baghdadiyyin — the register of the questions on which the Basran and Baghdadi schools divided
• Abu al-Qasim al-Balkhi (al-Ka'bi), al-Maqalat: Dhikr al-Mu'tazila — a Mu'tazilite account of the school, including the explanation of its name from the classing of the grave sinner as a fasiq
• Al-Jahiz, al-Bayan wa al-Tabyin and Kitab al-Hayawan — the surviving works of the Basran school's head after al-Nazzam
• Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari, Maqalat al-Islamiyyin wa Ikhtilaf al-Musallin — the doctrines of the school set down by a theologian who had belonged to it
• Abd al-Qahir al-Baghdadi, al-Farq bayna al-Firaq and Usul al-Din; Ibn Hazm, al-Fasl; Al-Shahrastani, al-Milal wa al-Nihal; and Ibn al-Murtada, Tabaqat al-Mu'tazila — the later heresiographies and the Zaydi biographical register, including the reports of al-Hasan al-Basri's view of the grave sinner
• Al-Tabari, Tarikh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk — the narrative of the Mihna, the execution of Ahmad ibn Nasr al-Khuza'i, and the dismissal of Ibn Abi Du'ad

Academic and Scholarly Sources

• İlyas Çelebi, "Mu‘tezile", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, İSAM. https://islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/mutezile — the principal source for this article and the fullest treatment of the school within the approved base: the explanations of its name, its emergence in Basra, the five principles and who completed them, the Basra and Baghdad schools and their scholars, its standing at the Abbasid court, the causes of its decline, its survival among the Zaydis and Imamis, and al-Ash'ari's debt to it
• İlyas Çelebi, "Nazzâm"; Muhammed Aruçi, "Vâsıl b. Atâ"; Avni İlhan, "Amr b. Ubeyd" and "Ebû Hâşim el-Cübbâî"; Yusuf Şevki Yavuz, "Cübbâî, Ebû Ali" and "Câhiz" (part 2, his theological views); Ramazan Şeşen, "Câhiz" (part 1); Metin Yurdagür, "Kādî Abdülcebbâr", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, İSAM — the entries on the school's own scholars, for their dates, teaching, works and disagreements
• Yusuf Şevki Yavuz, "Halku’l-Kur’ân"; Hayrettin Yücesoy, "Mihne"; M. Yaşar Kandemir, "Ahmed b. Hanbel" (part 1), TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, İSAM — the doctrine of the created Quran and the arguments on both sides, the course of the Mihna from 833 to its end in 234 (849) and the removal of its last traces in 237 (851–852), and Ahmad ibn Hanbal's examination and imprisonment
• İrfan Abdülhamîd Fettâh, "Eş‘arî, Ebü’l-Hasan"; Tahsin Görgün, "Hasan-ı Basrî" (part 3, his thought); Sönmez Kutlu, "Mürcie"; Ethem Ruhi Fığlalı, "Hâricîler" (part 1), TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, İSAM — the positions against which the school defined itself, and al-Ash'ari's upbringing among the Mu'tazilites, his break with them and his own doctrines
• Mahmut Kaya, "Kindî, Ya‘kūb b. İshak" (part 1) and "Beytülhikme"; M. Sait Özervarlı, "Muhammed Abduh", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, İSAM — kalam taking shape as an independent discipline in Mu'tazilite hands, al-Kindi's standing at the court, the translation movement and the founding of the House of Wisdom, and the rejection of the "Neo-Mu'tazilite" classification of Abduh
• The Muslim 500: The World's 500 Most Influential Muslims — for the school's origin with Wasil ibn Ata in Basra and the death of Bishr ibn al-Mu'tamir

Further Reading

The works below are offered to the reader as the standard modern scholarship on the school. Nothing in this article rests on them.

• Harry Austryn Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976) — the classic study of the school's theology in its philosophical setting
• Richard C. Martin, Mark R. Woodward and Dwi S. Atmaja, Defenders of Reason in Islam: Mu'tazilism from Medieval School to Modern Symbol (Oxford: Oneworld, 1997) — the school from its classical period to its modern reception
• W. Montgomery Watt, The Formative Period of Islamic Thought; Majid Fakhry, A History of Islamic Philosophy; Binyamin Abrahamov, Islamic Theology: Traditionalism and Rationalism; and Daniel Gimaret, "Mu'tazila", in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition — the standard shorter treatments
• Richard M. Frank, Beings and Their Attributes: The Teaching of the Basrian School of the Mu'tazila in the Classical Period; J.R.T.M. Peters, God's Created Speech: A Study in the Speculative Theology of the Mu'tazili Qadi l-Qudat Abu l-Hasan Abd al-Jabbar; George F. Hourani, Islamic Rationalism: The Ethics of Abd al-Jabbar; Sophia Vasalou, Moral Agents and Their Deserts: The Character of Mu'tazilite Ethics; and Margaretha T. Heemskerk, Suffering in the Mu'tazilite Theology — the specialist studies of the school's doctrines of the attributes, divine speech, ethics and suffering
• Al-Zamakhshari, al-Kashshaf an Haqa'iq Ghawamid al-Tanzil — the best known Quranic commentary written by a Mu'tazilite
• The Mihna and Ahmad ibn Hanbal — the inquisition over the created Quran and the scholar whose resistance to it the sources treat as its centre
• Caliph al-Ma'mun and The House of Wisdom — the caliph who made the school's doctrine the view of the state, and the translation movement of his reign